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Foreign Policy And The Middle East

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Chapter 16 focuses on American foreign policy and what it entails. Foreign policy of the United States determines how we interact with other nations and also the standards or guidelines for these interactions. Foreign policy is designed to protect America and ensure our safety both domestically and globally. There has been an ongoing struggle involving American foreign policy in the Middle East and specifically the war on terrorism. Conflict in the Middle East has been at the top of the American Foreign policy agenda for the past 50 years. As mentioned in the book, the greatest threats to U.S. security currently are the Middle East and North Korea. This ongoing battle is constantly being talked about on the news and in the newspaper. …show more content…

Military action and presence helps but I believe there needs to be more of a plan with a end goal. This plan needs to include a timetable for action and specific plan. On the contrary, it is hard to have an official plan when different groups and issues are always arising. Military action helps for the U.S. to advance and prevent terrorist groups from taking over more areas and causing more turmoil. For example, after the events of 9/11 the U.S. government focused its foreign policy on global war on terrorism in which soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Military action is what allowed us to expel Al-Qaeda terrorist from Afghanistan and liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s doctoral government. These would have not been possible without military intervention. The preemption doctrine is a doctrine of war making that reserves the right of the U.S. military to use advance strikes to stop rogue states from developing weapons of mass destruction. This doctrine has allowed us to use aggressive action in the Middle East in order to prevent terrorist groups from getting weapons of mass destruction. This has become engrained in U.S. policy as it is used to justify aggressive actions when there is an imminent threat of attack. It shouldn 't be used to justify attacks that are distant and vague. This is an important doctrine even though some people disagree with it. They believe advance

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